McCormicks?
Right, and that happened a lot in Chicago surprisingly. And this is where it gets sticky and where it starts to ruffle feathers because somehow people see these criticisms as an attack on them or their ancestors personally. There were serious doubts regarding the merger due to differences between the leaders of The League of Latin American Citizens and the President General of The Order of the Sons of America. Right. This lead Council #4 of The Order of the Sons of America to withdraw on February 7, 1929. Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. And during that period the majority of people working in agriculture were Mexican heritage people and the majority of people working in domestic service, were Black women. The delegates agreed to hold the first LULAC Convention on May 19, 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Its first Council #9 was created on February 22, 1934, in El Paso, Texas. Although its presence was traditionally strongest in Texas, LULAC grew to have operations throughout the United States and in Puerto Rico. Yeah because I know I mean in Texas is was very common to see No Blacks, No Mexicans allowed but we know for a fact that tons of Braceros were going into Texas soyeah. So its clear from these examples that Mexicans were facing some pretty blatant racism on one hand. The executive committee included Ben Garza as chairman, M.C.
Historian Ira Katznelson actually even goes so far as to call the New Deal affirmative action for white people, arguing that policies enacted in the New Deal increased inequality during the 1930s and 1940s and propelled Whites into the exploding middle class while systematically excluding Blacks and Mexican Americans from the same benefits of citizenship. And what could you do at that point? LULAC Councils have also responded to an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment. At the time, Hispanics faced various forms of discrimination in the United States, which the organization sought to end. So they would go through this really kind of horrific ordeal to get to work and once they got there they realized that what they were told they were going to be doing was not the same, right? This podcast is part of a series on immigration that we are doing here on the History Buffs. Idar wrote that Mexican children in Texas need an education. Elizabeth: And we can definitely take this further. But racial antagonisms werent confined to uneasiness over revolutionary activity.
Its first council #9 was created on February 22, 1934, in El Paso, Texas. 4:%4MpoZBOVW>dZ(eKtO{?V"(){-]XrEe*YwDbpTet.casC{CdtW5h6tzi)KCHJx. Ben Garza, leader of Council #4 of the Order of the Sons of America in Corpus Christi, united all Mexican American organizations under one title, one set of objectives, and one constitution. Dan and I are focusing on the Mexican-American experience within the United States and how citizenship and immigration status have gone hand in hand with ideas of American vs non-American. A national conference Adelante Mujer Hispana and two-day conferences on education and employment have been some of the Leagues most successful programs. For permission to publish any Dig: A History Podcast or History Buffs Podcast episodes in whole or in part please contact the Executive Producer at hello@digpodcast.org. League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the oldest and largest Latino organizations in the United States. Mexican Americans were not allowed to learn English. But yeah, this article in the, really shows that these uh, these kind of. Basically that uh, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans werent given the GI Bill because they were systematically kept if they did serve they were overwhelmingly kept in positions in the military where they were not eligible for these kinds of benefits once they got out. Elizabeth: Wow! This is the reason we talk about these things, to show that these arguments, this nativism isnt new. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in 1929, is the oldest and most widely respected Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States of America. Yeah, [sarcasm]. : So to jog your memory, the Treaty of Hidalgo was signed in 1848 and ceded thousands of acres of northern Mexico to the United States. They arrived in Reynosa near the border at 4am and then transferred to the INS center at Hidalgo, Texas. Compared to Americans I dont know. And we talked about how there were programs that invited them to come in and to be workers, so it wasnt that they were illegal aliens coming in a taking jobs but that they U.S. needed labor and went to Mexico and promoted it. Many border residents fled into the U.S. for safety and also many political exiles sought shelter in the U.S. too. So a lot of scholars actually argue that this pulled themselves up by the bootstraps idea of 20th century immigrants is kind of a fallacy. Uh, for the History Buffs Im Elizabeth. And just curious, you said they were getting about 50 cents an hour, was that a good wage? The Mexican Revolution which raged for a decade between 1910 and 1920 increased this flow of immigrants. They are not getting that much work, so obviously it makes it more complicated.
An article that appeared in the Progressive Era journal, The Survey, was less harsh in its blatant criticism of Mexican-heritage people, yet its author still prescribed to racist ideals. But although Mexicans were not affected by the quota system, they still faced Anglo racism as exemplified in this quote from the commissioner general of immigration, Long established routes from southern Europe to mexican ports and overland to the Texas border, formerly patronized almost exclusively by diseased and criminal aliens, are now resorted to by large numbers of Europeans who cannot gain legal admission because of passport difficulties, illiteracy, or the quota law., Dan: Yeah, so theyre not bringing the best [sarcasm], Elizabeth: Theyre bringing drugs and rapists right? Cursory readings of articles in Anglo-newspapers covering the Mexican Revolution make very clear the daily racism Tejanos experienced in the United States. In addition, LULAC fought for equal treatment of Hispanics through negotiation with state and local leaders when possible but through the legal system when necessary. In exchange for their labor they were guaranteed a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour during the 40s and 50 cents during most of the 50s. 2015-2025 DIG: A HISTORY PODCAST. The name of the new organization would be taken from the youngest of the three with the word United added to the name. These founders envisioned LULAC as an organization that would be strongly accepted by Mexican Americans throughout Texas. Gonzalez was elected Vice President General, A. DeLuna was elected Secretary General, and Louis C. Wilmot of Corpus Christi, Texas, was elected Treasurer General. Private living spaces, bath houses, and washroom facilities were non-existent. And statistically, foreign-born, or second generation European born immigrants were numerically represented on welfare rolls in MUCH higher rates that Mexican heritage people, although Mexicans were painted as more dependent on welfare as a whole. Canales and J. Luz Saenz as committee members. Many of the official rites that LULAC adopted had never be adopted by any other Mexican American organization. He responded that each notch on the handles of his guns represented one kill and that he had twenty-seven notches, not counting Mexicans. In exchange for their labor they were guaranteed a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour during the 40s and 50 cents during most of the 50s. A constitutional convention was to be held on 18, and 19 May 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and an executive committee was established to administer LULAC until the convention. Okay, well we appreciate you so much for sticking around and listening to this episode. The treaty also defined the southern US border as running along the Rio Grande. The Mexican government also had the power to blacklist certain states from receiving Braceros if states were found to be discriminating against them. So Mexico also has a large vested interest in having this continue. And there is hard data to show that social workers in the Southwest kind of cherry-picked data to make it seem as if Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants were more reliant on relief than they actually were. If you remember from your high school Spanish class, the word brazos is arms, and bracero translates roughly to one who works with his arms, or a manual laborer. Its not like they could just go home. Dan: As the mining and agricultural businesses in the Southwest grew, more and more laborers from where needed. The author of the article refers to the Mexican soldiers in these camps as children and an indolent lower-class that live hand to mouth, are lazy, easily pleased, easily annoyed, crafty, hospitable and totally irresponsible. The authors contempt for the untrained soldiers and their lack of military prowess was evident in his writing. LULACs efforts against discrimination continued over the next four decades, and it remained active into the early 21st century. If youll remember, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the annexation of northern Mexico by the United States meant that Mexican heritage peoples had to be considered white in order to become naturalized citizens. Because of pressure from the agriculture lobby, Mexico was exempt from the quotas. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America.
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As mentioned in the last episode, a lot of Mexican people were already living in the areas that would become the United States. Um, but the writer of this article writes These women, he wrote, are generally of the Indian type, totally uneducated, unspeakably dirty, and apparently quite content to undergo physical hardships for the sake of being with their masters. I bring this up because this is just one example of this disdain that Mexicans and Tejanos faced from Anglo journalists, law enforcement, and settlers. Many border residents fled into the U.S. for safety and also many political exiles sought shelter in the U.S. too. Theyre not seeing the large agricultural firms who have been lobbying Congress to get this cheap labor, right, they dont see those guys as the bad guys, they see the people that they see everyday, they see the workers coming in everyday and taking over their jobs. Right? So its strange but not strange that Mexicans started becoming associated with illegal immigration in the 1920s even though they werent under a quota system. Since then, LULAC has fought for full access to the political process and equal educational opportunity for all Hispanics. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. To trick counterfeiters, Benjamin Franklin deliberately misspelled Pennsylvania when printing official currency for the American colony. So you had farmers in the U.S. arguing that they would be unable to process their crops without Mexican migrant labor. Canales and based upon the one used by The Knights of America. League of United Latin American Citizens: voter registration. One of the ways we can see how Mexicans, both US citizens and unnaturalized immigrants, operated within this kind of binary idea of American and non-American um, is when we consider the expansion of the welfare state during the 1930s and the New Deal. Dan: Theyre not going to go home.
Or that there were no quotas on Mexican immigration. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. The program admitted roughly 200,000 laborers per year, however, only about 2 percent of American farm operators employed braceros.
A Harpers Weekly article entitled, Mexican Camp-Followers, for example, gives us an exceptionally xenophobic account of the Constitutionalist armies of the Revolution and the women who traveled with them. They arent denying the hard work of those early southern and eastern European immigrants, but they are saying that those immigrants gained access to New Deal and other welfare programs that Black and Mexican heritage people were not. So what the Immigration Act of 1924 did however, was create the policies that required a more robust U.S./Mexico border control. where there had not previously been in any kind of practical or physical sense. This alternative press covered issues pertaining to the Spanish speaking community, especially social and economic obstacles facing the Mexican-American population and they also kept readers abreast of growing political turmoil in Mexico.
But during the 1930s and the New Deal, ideas about race and who was considered white and assimilable and non-white and therefore un-assimilable became really important to the formation and implementation of welfare policy. southern and eastern Europeans, were largely pulled into the fold of the welfare state and thus, basically full and equal citizenship while those who were un-white, African and Mexican Americans, became kind of subject to a stricter social control if they were allowed to participate in welfare programs. Elizabeth: But those who were considered assimilable and white, i.e. As a result, the percentage of visas available to individuals from the British Isles and Western Europe increased, but newer immigration from other places like Southern and Eastern Europe was limited. The founding of LULAC marked an important moment in the history of Hispanic people in the United States. It was created through the merger of several community groups, and many of its leaders were middle-class Mexican Americans. In the first year of its creation, the Bracero program led to the US importing roughly 215,000 Mexican nationals to work as agricultural laborers and then another 75,000 would be sent to work of the Southern Pacific railroad along with 20 or so other railroads. One family in particular, the Idar family, was very active in Mexican and American politics.
Have you uh, have you read [Lizbeth] Cohens Consumer Republic? The Bracero Program began in 1942, and was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, which started the legalization and control of Mexican migrant workers along Americas southern border area. Elizabeth: Well I think it kind of, back to your earlier point, you can see why that kinda would engender animosity toward Mexican laborers right? Canales friendly amended the motion so that the name read League of United Latin American Citizens. Basically that uh, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans werent given the GI Bill because they were systematically kept if they did serve they were overwhelmingly kept in positions in the military where they were not eligible for these kinds of benefits once they got out. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012. Dan: Right. Elizabeth: Okay, well we appreciate you so much for sticking around and listening to this episode. Thus, they were disenfranchised and unable to vote. Many Mexican American families worked in fields, farms, and ranches and their children never went to school.
LULACs founders could never have imagined that LULAC would later serve 48 states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, South America, and the armed service base in Heidelburg, West Germany. On the other hand there was actually some encouragement for them to come into the country right? I think historically, when youre studying labor history you hear a lot about African-Americans being called in as strikebreakers.
Introductions: Im Elizabeth Garner Masarik and Im Dan Wallace and we are the History Buffs. Right. Gonzalez as Secretary, J.T. And those omissions were not a mistake. Our Past Project The History Buffs Podcast, https://digpodcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BraceroFINAL.mp3, Mexican Farm Workers Who have been Accepted for Farm Labor in the U.S. through the Braceros Program, Julias Bureau: The Temperance Virtuoso, the Father of Journalism, and Life after Death in the Spiritualist Anglo-Atlantic, Cheesecloth, Spiritualism, and State Secrets: Helen Duncans Famous Witchcraft Trial, Domesticity and Depression: Kentucky Coal Mining, Song, and Organizing During Bloody Harlan, One Medicine: Animal Experiments and the Making of Modern Medical Science, Canary in a Coal Mine Sentinel Animals in the Depths, Puritan Sex: The Surprising History of Puritans and Sexual Practices, The Marquis de Sade: Sex, Violence, and the French Revolution, Selling Sex: 19th Century New York City Prostitution and Brothels, Mexican Immigration in the 20th century: Revolution, Welfare, and Braceros, The Demonologist and the Clairvoyant: Ed and Lorraine Warren, Paranormal Investigation, and Exorcism in the Modern World, Both Man and Witch: Uncovering the Invisible History of Male Witches, A History of Racial Passing in the United States, Amy Robsart, Lady Dudley: The Death that Launched a Thousand Rumors, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, Race in 1920s America: Hellfighters, Red Summer, and Restrictive Immigration. You may hear me refer to white people in the borderlands as Anglos.
Many traveled hundreds of miles toting children, pots and pans, and other household goods for their families and the soldiers they accompanied. LULAC was one of the first national organizations to place emphasis on the role of women. Marin, A. DeLuna and Fortunio Trevino, member of The Order of the Sons of America. Because if this bracero program is starting to put small farmers out of business, then those farmers and the families that rely on them are going to start seeing these braceros as the problem as whats putting them out of business. The Immigration Act of 1924 completely excluded immigrants from Asia. So the meat packing up there. The article concluded that Mexicans who were immigrating into the United States had, low standards of living and of morals, their illiteracy, their utter lack of proper political interest, the retarding effect of their employment upon the wage scale of the more progressive racescombine them as a rather undesirable class of residents. Does that sound familiar Dan? As a result, war time was accompanied by growing fears of racial mixing and prophecies Read more, 2017 The Producers of Dig: A History Podcast. And just to put this into perspective, they had stopped doing these kind of inspections and de-lousing things at Ellis Island just a few years before. In one glaringly obvious example, Initially, Domestic workers and agricultural workers were excluded from the labor rights of the New Deal including Social Security, unemployment benefits, collective bargaining, minimum wages, and maximum hours- all benefits codified by the New Deal. We have another section of this story and were going to cover were going to go into NAFTA and talking about the maquiladoras along the border and into even the present day. We have no other option but to do it on our own, so we are not discriminated and mistreated by the strangers around us., She wrote it is with with deep sorrowwe have seen teachers instructing our children with no regard for the mother tongue. The paper expressed deep and widespread concern over the education of our children, and the preservation of our mother tongue.. An article that appeared in the Progressive Era journal. All For One, One For All -- A Celebration of 75 Years of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Elizabeth: One of the ways we can see how Mexicans, both US citizens and unnaturalized immigrants, operated within this kind of binary idea of American and non-American um, is when we consider the expansion of the welfare state during the 1930s and the New Deal.
Elizabeth: Yeah because I know I mean in Texas is was very common to see No Blacks, No Mexicans allowed but we know for a fact that tons of Braceros were going into Texas soyeah. They proceeded to an examination, a chest X-ray to detect tuberculosis and fumigation for hoof and mouth disease. And also, just as an aside, because Im a welfare historian and a bit of a wonk about it, the American welfare state did not begin in the 1930s, it just became broader and more visible. These schools were staffed with the worst teachers and the buildings were in deplorable conditions. When the United States of North America annexed a third of Mexicos territory following the Mexican War, nearly 77,000 Mexicans became U.S. citizens. And just to put this into perspective, they had stopped doing these kind of inspections and de-lousing things at Ellis Island just a few years before. Elizabeth: and we appreciate you listening. The Bracero Program began in 1942, and was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, which started the legalization and control of Mexican migrant workers along Americas southern border area. Elizabeth: Weve kind of banged you over the head with that but socially at least, Mexican heritage peoples were not given the same social rights as white people.
State coordinators for women carry out local programs for women. Uh, for the History Buffs Im Elizabeth. There were plenty of strikes that happened throughout this program.
In Texas, prejudice and acts of discrimination had reached such extreme proportions that Mexican Americans began organizing to defend themselves. Laredo is one, you have Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. . southern and eastern Europeans, were largely pulled into the fold of the welfare state and thus, basically full and equal citizenship while those who were un-white, African and Mexican Americans, became kind of subject to a stricter social control if they were allowed to participate in welfare programs. Discrimination knew no age limits. And also a reminder about whiteness and naturalization. LULACs continues to play an active role in these efforts. Feature Image:Mexican Farm Workers Who have been Accepted for Farm Labor in the U.S. through the Braceros Program, Your email address will not be published. The amended motion was unanimously passed. Neither our government, nor the U.S. government can do anything for our children. so she was part of the movement to found her own. Yes, and I can think of one interesting example, I think it was in 1943 where there was a strike- it was in Washington and it was Mexican braceros who actually joined up with Japanese American workers who were allowed to leave internment camps and go and do some work in the Northwest and were facing injustice and banded together. So a lot of money going back home. Yeah, [sarcasm]. Components like this were due to the Mexican governments concern over the treatment of its citizens. So Mexico is kind of in a tight spot too, you know, they want their citizens to be treated with respect but they also want to keep this program going. Initially the U.S. Mexican Border Patrol consisted of former cowboys and small ranchers. La Cronica and particularly Jovita Idar addressed the treatment that Spanish-speaking Americans received in the borderlands in the early 20th century. The first of a series of attempts occurred on August 14th, 1927, when delegates from The Order of the Sons of America, The Knights of America, and other allied organizations traveled to Harlingen, to officially form The League of Latin American Citizens. Cause thats basically her argument with the GI Bill. . Download this episode (right click and save), Written and Produced by: Elizabeth Garner Masarik and Dan Wallace.